Strang Report "Cessationist" comments

0:00 Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to this live edition of The Strang Report for Thursday, October 5th, 2023. Well today I'm going to talk about the new movie, Cessationist. I watched it in the last 24 hours. I have some very definite thoughts to share so you're going to stay tuned. Interestingly I've mentioned it to some of my friends, you know, leadership friends, and nobody had ever heard of it.

0:41 So I know it's brand new, they played it at a conference called the G3 Conference. It's only available on Vimeo. When you're in the business you only have to speculate why they don't have it on more. So I don't know that it's going to make that big an impact, but I do think it's important. It's an issue that's been in the church for several centuries at least. There are good things I can say about it and I have some deep, deep concerns. So it has the idea that the gifts of the Spirit ended, and they even specifically said with the life of the last apostle who was John who lived to be almost a hundred.

1:28 I think a lot of their arguments are very, very weak, but then on the other hand they said a lot of things that we need to really think about. So to kick it off I want to show the little trailer that's on YouTube. It's only three minutes long. There's a lot of stuff it doesn't cover, but it does give you a feel for it. Professionally it's done well. It's very professional. They have some little dramatizations, even a little bit of cartoons I guess you'd call it to kind of break it up. A lot of talking heads and a lot of us kind of dry, but considering that they did a very good job.

2:12 You judge for yourself and I'll be back to analyze what it was. It's not really a review. It's not that formal. It's more like Steve Strang's thoughts about this movie called Sensationist. A miracle is when the natural order is reversed. The demonstration of the power of God to authenticate the messenger that he is a man sent by God to speak on behalf of God.

2:57 Reversing an illness, a sickness or death. It is an extraordinary, powerful operation of God that attests redemptive revelation. Sign. To be a true apostle, Jesus said, I'm sending you out to represent me and I'm going to give you the power to work miracles. Those gifts were given for a very specific purpose and so those gifts have now ceased.

3:38 I've been in these meetings, five, 10,000 people all speaking in tongues at the same time. The charismatic movement is constantly searching after the next experience. It kind of becomes like an addiction. This is not optional. If you are not earnestly desiring spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, you are sinning. So what they've done with the gift of prophecy, they simply redefined it. COVID-19, you'll never be back. In biblical times, if you get up and you speak in God's name and that's not God's word, you were stoned to death.

4:20 I really want to apologize, sincerely apologize for missing the prophecy about Donald Trump. The guy said it was wrong. Isn't a big deal? Isn't a big deal? Isn't a big deal? Isn't a big deal? If you believe these manifestations should be commonplace in the lives of every Christian, then you're going to want to believe that it's real. No one has the gift of healing today. No one has the gift of prophecy to foretell the future. No one is hearing a word from God. People are self-deceived.

5:01 Every experience I have, everything that I might have labeled as the Holy Spirit in the past, I've got to test it all by the word of God. You know, there's a lot with this film that I can agree with, especially that last thing, that we have to test all of these things by the word of God. I agree with that 100%. But these people start with a point of view. Of course, we all have a point of view, including mine, but they start with a point of view and then they word everything to back up that point of view.

5:50 Really, anyone in any situation with any kind of argument can do that kind of thing, whether it's a non-Christian religion, whether it's a secularist or the atheist. You can do that kind of thing. You set up a straw man, you knock it down. One of the things they did is this is from a very intellectual arm of the church, and that's probably good. The people that were in this are obviously well-educated, they're obviously thinkers, but what they do is they would define certain things a certain way—prophesy, miracles. And if you didn't go along with their definition, word for word, inference by inference, you were just wrong.

6:37 And this is an oversimplification, but it'd be like taking a glass that's half full, and you say it's half full, and the other person says, no, it's half empty. How can you be stupid enough to think it's half full? Can't you see that it's half empty? Some of their arguments, to me, almost fell into that category. There were things in it that I agreed with. They had a little history of the miraculous in the Bible, they had a little history of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement. Interestingly, they attacked the Charismatics more, partly because the Charismatics tend to be on TV and they can get the clips easier.

7:24 Also, the Charismatics tend to be out there a little more. The Pentecostal denominations, like the Assemblies of God and the Four Square, were like mentioned in passing, the Church of God wasn't mentioned at all, but really, any of the Pentecostal denominations could be blasted in this way. And frankly, they could have found more extreme examples than they did. I know that because I've been covering the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement most of my adult life, and if you've ever read my story, you know, some of which I tell in this book, Spirit-Led, Living in an Upside-Down World, which I'll talk about in just a minute, you'll know that I grew up in this.

8:06 In fact, I'm proud to say that I'm a fourth generation Pentecostal, which meant that my grandparents came into Pentecost as either late teenagers or early adults, and they're both my grandmother and grandfather's mothers came into Pentecost as adults, and so that made my mother third generation, and I'm fourth generation. My grandson is sixth generation, so I grew up in it. I just, you know, this is my perspective. I did sort of run from the call of God, and I came back because of the modern Charismatic movement where the Holy Spirit was being outpoured in the mainline churches among Roman Catholics.

8:51 And one of the things that I think is sensationalist are concerned because a lot of the things from the Charismatic Pentecostal movement are actually infiltrating the church more and more as time goes on. In fact, they even were, they said it kind of like, we can't believe this, but they figured that at least half of evangelicals would believe that miraculous things are for today, and this seemed to be a great concern. A lot of Charismatic worship has, you can go to a Baptist church, or at least some Baptist churches, and the worship service would be more, it has a Charismatic flavor, and some of the newer songs kind of cross over among different denominations.

9:44 A lot of the cessationists come from very old denominations, very staid, very much into kind of a European type of worship, particularly the Presbyterians, you know, where the services have to be very quiet, the organs have to be very loud, the hymns are very traditional, there's no emotion. I mean, that's how the Europeans traditionally have worshiped, and it came over here on the boat with the immigrants who came from Europe. It's almost that simple, just like the Catholics brought their religion with them. Pentecostalism, on the other hand, came out of the African American experience, and came out of the revivalist experiences that go all the way back to John Wesley, then certainly the first grade awakening, the second grade awakening, the holiness movement, which would have been during the era of Dwight L. Moody and so forth.

10:50 And a lot of those movements before 1900 were attacked by religious people of the day using some kind of the same arguments that these cessationists are using today. So in a way, this is the same old, same old, if you can understand what I'm saying. Also, as they went through and attacked some of the excesses, and there are excesses, it's the same kind of attacks that secularists and even atheists can make of Christians in general. And they also made some conclusions.

11:30 They jumped to some conclusions based on the Word of God that seemed to make sense to them, but I think they were vulnerable to the same arguments, and I'll give an example. They showed a timeline in which the time of Moses and Joshua, there were miracles, parting of the Red Sea, the walls of Jericho falling, etc. Then there were none during the period of the judges and David and so forth. Then again with Elijah and Jeremiah, and then there were none, and then during the time of Christ and the early apostles, and to them, because they believed the Word of God, or at least they believed the parts of the Word of God that go along with their doctrine, they said, those were real miracles.

12:22 But then they come up today and say that Charismatics and Pentecostals, when they claim someone to get healed or prophesy or something like that, you can't prove them. Well guess what? You cannot go back and prove that Moses parted the Red Sea. You cannot prove that the prophet Elijah raised the child from the dead. You can't. In fact, there's only record of it in the Hebrew Scriptures, and there are people who say the Hebrew Scriptures aren't real. There are people who say that David, arguably the greatest king in Israelite history, didn't even exist, although archaeologists are starting to say that there is archaeological proof that he existed.

13:12 Now fast forward. You know, not everything is a miracle, and sometimes people claim miracles. Sometimes people get miracles and lose them. They did not give any margin for error at all. They didn't give any margin for people trying. They didn't even give any recognition to some of the apologies. Chris Ballatin, who's a friend of mine, was very strong in saying that Trump would be re-elected. I actually believe the same thing. I personally believe that the election was stolen. I don't really understand the whole thing about the prophetic aspect.

13:52 It was a black eye to the prophetic movement, no question. But Chris had the humility to apologize and say that he missed it, and they sort of damned him for that. There was a lot of humility. Some of the clips that they showed, and I knew a lot of the people. In fact, several of them are authors. Like Bickel, Alexander Pagani, or just two that come to mind. Even Sam Storms. Sam Storms is not that well known. He's highly respected. He moves within evangelical circles more than most Charismatics would be, and he's respected as a real thinker.

14:37 He's also a former cessationist, and they seem to have particular animosity toward former cessationists who come over to our side of the street, so to speak. Most of their doctrines, and most of the doctrines of Pentecostal and Charismatics would be the same. We believe in Jesus. We believe his death on Calvary. We believe that he is resurrected and ascended to heaven. We believe in the Trinity of the God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. I could go on and on. In fact, somebody made a joke one time that some of these people seem to believe in God the Son and the Holy Bible.

15:17 In other words, they don't believe in the Holy Spirit. And listen, I believe in the Holy Bible. The words Holy Bible do not appear in the Holy Bible. And listen, Charismatic and Pentecostals believe every word of God and make a big deal about it. In fact, there's a whole segment of the Charismatic movement called the Word Movement, or the Word of Faith Movement. And I had one of the sort of liberal Christians, there was a big controversy probably in the 90s about was the Bible infallible? In other words, is every word true? And he asked me in a private social setting if this was a controversy within Pentecostal and Charismatic circles.

16:06 And I said, not really. I was being a little bit facetious, and I ad-libbed this, but I actually said this. I said, not really, it's not a controversy, because if you don't believe the word of God is infallible, you're considered backslidden. And that is true to a certain extent. They did interview several people who claimed to be former Pentecostals who had changed their mind for a variety of reasons. But you know what, you can find people in every group who will be a convert and then change their mind. In fact, it's been a problem lately that some rather high-profile evangelicals have actually turned their back on the gospel and said they don't even believe in God.

16:54 It's been a real embarrassment. It's sad. It's the work of the enemy, I believe, to blind people's eyes. I personally believe that if people are sensationalists, they're really blinded. They may be sincere, but they're blinded. And while I can agree with them on a lot of things, I think they're wrong, just in the same way they believe that I'm wrong. Interestingly, they didn't seem to reach out to any of the people that they criticized, most of whom were alive. They seemed to pick on some things that I thought were pretty minor.

17:38 For example, they made a big deal about Jim Baker. They even showed a little sound bite of somebody saying that he was convicted and all the charges. Well, he was. And then it was thrown out as a travesty of justice. And I've talked about it before. I've written about it. I know Jim personally. I covered it as a journalist back in the day. But if the truth be known, it was an example of cancel culture. The powers that be wanted to get rid of Jim Baker. He was an embarrassment. He was very, very successful. He was a Pentecostal. And he was an embarrassment.

18:19 And they were looking for any way to discredit him financially in a bunch of other ways. They couldn't find anything. But he did some missteps in which they were able to clobber him. And the man ended up in prison. They didn't even hint that he was let out and the charges were all overturned. I realize it's always hard to always show the other side. But they cherry picked and they picked the things that proved their point. And who can blame them? That's the nature of journalism and documentaries and so forth.

19:04 They did it for a reason. I thought it was interesting that I have worked in the Christian community. And while I am both a Pentecostal and a Charismatic, we worked, I work in the Christian publishing industry, and interacted a lot in many, many different ways with people who weren't Charismatic or Pentecostal, some of whom were probably hostile to it. But I must say that my own experience is that people have been polite. I remember one time that things were being discussed about the kind of emotionalism or the excitement of the Pentecostal movement.

19:49 And one fellow, and he was making a joke of course, but it was true, he said the only movement they had in their church was when people would cross or uncross their legs. And he was making light of the fact that in Pentecostal circles, man, you've got to be moving all the time. You're clapping, jumping, raising your hands. And a lot of that comes out of the black experience. I started to say this a minute ago, and when I commented on this in an earlier podcast, I did make the point, you know, in the same way that the Presbyterians brought—and I'll say something about Presbyterians in a second if I don't forget—but in the same way they brought over their worship style, even their architecture, even their terminology like the Westminster Confession and so on and so forth, all came from Europe.

20:43 The Pentecostal experience came out of the African American experience of singing, shouting, saying, preach it, brother, saying amen, raising their hands. And when the revival—now revivalists, if you look at the first and second grade awakening, those people got excited too. Sometimes they fell on the ground. Sometimes the things that you read about sound an awful lot like the things we hear about Pentecostalism. Here is Jamie says, what I find most interesting is that this is what they're centered on, not spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's not their priority. Well, Jamie, I think you're right.

21:25 The people in the documentary seem sincere. There were an awful lot of talking heads. Even though it was very well done, it was still very dry. I'm not sure that it's worth $24 to see it. I was shocked by the price. You can even only rent it for $10. I don't know. Maybe they had a big budget, but that is much higher than the normal fees. If you want to watch it, it's on Vimeo. And you know, I'm sure they want to spread the gospel in the same way. Interestingly, missionaries from that segment of the church, when they go overseas and are confronted by demon influences, especially in countries where there's a lot of paganism, they don't operate very well.

22:17 There's lots of examples. See Peter Wagner was one. He went overseas and didn't have any power against the demonic forces he was up against. And it was the Pentecostals who were able to break through because there's a power in the Holy Spirit. There really is a power in the Holy Spirit. Now I made some random notes of little points I want to make, and I'm starting to run out of time. But it was interesting to me that they called our side continuationists. In my entire life, I had never heard that word, and I'm fairly well educated, and I've operated in evangelical circles.

23:00 It was interesting also that of the people they had as experts, I'd never heard of any of them. Now I can be wrong a lot, and there's a lot I don't know. But I would say that within the Christian community, maybe John Piper was one. The people they interviewed, I actually knew most of the people, as I mentioned before. I just thought it was kind of interesting, and I'm saying that they talked a little bit about blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that's the only thing that won't be forgiven. And they said, you know, the other side says that we're blaspheming the Holy Spirit.

23:43 We're really not because of this, this, and this, and this. You know what? Maybe they're right. But I would say I would be real, real careful in some of the things that they said. And it's not like these people thought this up originally. I mean, people were making these arguments long before these people were born, or certainly before they went to seminary. Now I have some Presbyterian in my background. My father, who was an Assembly of God minister, went back and got his advanced degrees. And back in that day, there were no Pentecostal seminaries. He went to a Presbyterian seminary. And I was in first, second, and third grade. And I can remember being, as a young child, being exposed to Presbyterianism.

24:30 I thought it was very dry and kind of boring. So my family back in Europe were Huguenots. They were Calvinists from France. We would call them Presbyterians today. And so that's my background. Of course, it didn't really affect me all these generations later. But I mean, I have some affinity. And you know, there are a lot of good things you can say about the Presbyterians. For one thing, they aren't, at least a certain segment of the Presbyterians are not going to be woke, like a lot of the other mainstream denominations. They're very academic. They are studious. Most of the ones I know personally, and there's a seminary here in my city.

25:17 And I happen to know a lot of these people socially. They're usually very nice people. I appreciate them. You know, there's a lot more than that I could talk about. You know, they wanted to prove the New Testament healings. And I actually started talking about this a minute ago. They show Eutychus, you know, he was a fellow that fell asleep and fell out the window. They can't prove he was healed any more than some of these other things. And there's a lot, a lot of times these things happen. And you can't prove them later. One of the reasons I wanted, I wrote God and Donald Trump is that there were prophecies going back to 2007 that God was going to raise up somebody that nobody expected who it would be.

26:08 Later on, people started saying it was Donald Trump. As up to election day, it looked like it was going to be impossible. Yet he was elected. I wrote an entire book and I documented partly because it was one time where there were very clear predictions in writing and on video beforehand and then it came true. We published a book with Benny Hinn one time on some of the miracles in his, and we would only take them if there was medical proof. And a lot of times, it just had not been documented very well before because I guess maybe people didn't know what it needed to be. One time I saw a hit piece on Benny Hinn on one of these television programs and they said he even wrote a book on miracles and they didn't say anything about it.

27:03 And I thought to myself, yeah, they checked that out looking for something to put on this show and they didn't find anything because we are very careful. Same thing with God and Donald Trump. I was very careful. Now some of those prophets did say he'd be in for two terms. We don't know if he'll be in for two terms or not. And it is an embarrassment, as I said, that he didn't win last time. You know what? They didn't mention my book, which was very carefully documented and it was come to pass. I'll say one more thing. They made fun of some leaders who were flawed.

27:44 I even went online and looked up, like for example, they criticized John G. Lake, who I'd never heard about it. Early in his ministry, there was some accusations against him. There were some against Catherine Coleman. Whatever it was, these people repented, I believe. But the thing is the Bible is full of imperfect leaders. And you know what? I'd like to challenge them. Who knows what's in their background? Everybody's done something. And so when you watch The Cessationist, I think there's a lot we can learn.

28:26 We need to be careful. We need to realize that people are watching. There is a lot of craziness that happens in Pentecostalism, partly because we have religious freedom and there's nobody to really put their thumb on it and squash it. It's a dilemma. It's something that I've dealt with my entire career. We've written about it so many times. There's got to be kind of a self-policing and there has been to some extent. They even referred to some of it. But like I said, they had a point of view. They wanted to prove something. They proved it. Now, I believe that my book, Spirit-Led Living in an Upside-Down World, is actually an answer.

29:06 The Holy Spirit is for today. You can read the book. You can get it on Amazon or wherever books are sold. I actually bought a copy this week in Barnes and Noble. I wanted the experience of going in and picking it up off the shelf. And I encourage you to do the same. We will be dealing with this again. I went a little bit over, but I thought it was worth it. And I hope that you enjoyed it. Share this with others. I don't really want to get into a controversy with these people. They're probably very good people. But I may reach out and have a debate. I will also get certain... Michael Brown has already agreed to be on my podcast and maybe some others.

29:48 My purpose is not to promote her documentary. I don't want to make a bigger problem of this because really this has been going on for years. But that's the way I see it. And I have a platform in order to share it. And I hope that I caused you to think. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope that you tune in again for another edition of The Strang Report. God bless you. From 1975, Charisma has been at the forefront of reporting on revival, miracles, and the move of God in our world. Charisma Magazine is now going exclusively online to reach beyond the physical barriers of a print issue.

30:28 Charisma Magazine Online is committed to bringing you the very best spirit-led content to inspire your walk with God in this upside-down world. Go to MyCharisma.com for exclusive content today.